Poured from 650ml bottle. Pours a brownish black with reddish highlights. Nice colour. Apart from the big bitter finish, there's not a lot about this that seems "Cascadian." The aromatic are strangely muted, so all you can really detect on the nose are dark grainy malt and chocolate notes. The taste is like a porter without much in the way of hop flavour. Yeah, it's bitter and yeah it's dark, but it doesn't really do the style justice. Not a bad beer, just not as promised.

650ml bottle. Not quite sure how this is different from the 2012 Cascadian Dark Ale, save the miniscule ABV differential. The bottle is an apparent wealth of brewing info, including a purported 60 IBUs. The Alberta rep (admittedly, his assistant) wasn't particularly up on that little piece of info earlier today. Oh well, here we go.

This beer pours an ostensibly clear, very dark cola-highlighted brownish hue, with two fingers of densely foamy, and moderately creamy pale beige head, which leaves a decent array of broadly swathed painted lace around the glass as it evenly sinks away.

It smells of light citrus and pine hop essences, softly roasted bready caramel malt, a touch of bittersweet chocolate, and even fainter dry coffee notes. The taste is partly charred caramel malt, a slightly sour breadiness, some soft, inert citrus and drupe fruitiness, an ethereal touch of grainy meatiness, and a weird mineral essence that delves a little too easily into the wee bit of extra ABV.

The bubbles are quite sublimated, and hardly noticeable, the body a decent medium weight, and a little pithy and cloying in its smoothness. It finishes off-dry, the lingering caramel, sour grain, and musty fruitiness holding fast in the overall innocuousness of this offering.

Pretty much in line with last year's vintage affair, an adequate, yet hardly fulfilling version of this nascent style, the extra year apparently wasted in conferring more rudimentary knowledge on this strangely oblivious West Coast-adjacent brewery. Sexy label notwithstanding, I'm not grokking any improvement here, sadly.

Bomber poured into a shaker pint glass. Fits the black ale moniker well, almost pitch black with little in the way of a colored halo and a copious amount of beige colored froth. Aroma is driven largely by dark malts: Coffee, dry cacao power and a hint of ash, with the hops in the background ... I am getting an elusive grapefruit citrus and a stronger element rather like watermelon hard candy. This is one CDA where the term "black IPA" probably does not fit (see Steele's book on IPA for a brief discussion of how these are probably distinct styles), with the malts dominating the proceedings while the hops are unassuming, low key, and perhaps a tad neutered. Some chocolate, coffee, and cola notes are pleasant enough and there is also a grape juice like fruitiness lurking in the background along with more of the melon from the nose. Body on the thin side, pretty fizzy, and its only in the finish that one gets a little pine resin. Unidimensional. Nothing super offensive here but this is boring for what's promised on the label and provides yet another example of this brewery leaving me underwhelmed (if that's a word).

The seasonal release series brewed right on Granville Island has been rebranded the Black Note Book Series with cool new artwork and new names for the beers. The first out is the newly named Cloak &Dagger which is a Cascadian Dark Ale. It is quite a dark and chocolatey beer that shows the hops ( 65 IBU) but tastes more brown ale than IPA. I liked the biggish mouthfeel and the long bitter finish which also had the chocolate notes show up. Not the best CDA in BC but certainly worth buying and a worthy start to this new series from GI.

A - dark cola black with just a little light coming through the bottom, tall creamy mocha head retained very nicely at one fingerS - coffee, licorice, cola, with hints of pine and fresh greensT - big malty hits of dark roasted coffee and cola with some nuttiness, pine and earthy hops shine through toward the back halfM - rich and full up front, creamy smooth, hop bitterness builds toward a nice finishO - a nice entry into this style, this one has big yet balanced flavours, and I enjoy that the hops are sneaky but come through in the end

A very dark reddish brown with enough clarity to see half way under the foam, big three finger head quickly falls to a thick film and then sits there long enough to leave a couple rings of lace followed by some random patches

S melon, gummy bears, faint citrus, with lots of soft caramel and a little chocolate and coffee, not the hop profile I was expecting from Cascadian Ale more English to me

T very faint pine and slightly more citrus but still more melon, caramel and dark roast then anything, I don't mind it but like but not as West Coast as I'd like

M medium bodied, just enough bubbles to cream it up a little, slight bitter bite with more melon and some chocolate and faint char on the finish

O decent beer but I seem to remember loving the last CDA Granville put out, this ones missing just a little something but still well worth trying

I'll need to go back and look at my reviews but I seem to remember giving the last version a much higher rating. more of a overly hopped English stout in my books, either way it went down pretty fast

Part of the new branding by Granville Island Brewing for their limited releases. Since the 'standard' offerings from GIB have been transferred out to Molson thanks to the huge demand GIB beers have accumulated vs. the small space GIB has to brew, more time has been freed up for brewmaster Vern to craft these "Black Notebook" series releases.

This is, well, it's called a Cascadian Dark Ale here despite Steamworks' efforts to stop others from using the term. Thank you GIB, and screw you Steamworks. Also sometimes called the black IPA, this is basically a IPA hop-presence combined with roasted malts in place of an IPA's lighter malt profile.

[Notes from May 10th 2013]

A: Black, though thin. Really black. Head is only a shade lighter than a full-on stout, though thinner and less dense.

S: Bitter chocolate notes, earl grey tea. I'm looking for the hops and not really noticing a whole lot. I think the earthy tea notes are coming from the hops but that's about it.

T: First up is the bitter chocolate roasted malts followed quickly by the hops, though neither are overly punchy. The chocolate / espresso malts are slightly oily and the hops is earthy and drying, taking care of the oiliness quickly.

M: Thin but still a little creamy. Oily and coating and first, dry towards the finish.

This is one of the better CDA's I've had, beating some that I wanted to like more (like Parallel 49's Black Hops).